Their Eyes Were Watching God

Zora Neale Hurston

Character List

Themes, Motifs & Symbols

Janie

Although Their Eyes Were Watching God revolves
around Janie’s relationships with other people, it is first and
foremost a story of Janie’s search for spiritual enlightenment and
a strong sense of her own identity. When we first and last see Janie,
she is alone. The novel is not the story of her quest for a partner
but rather that of her quest for a secure sense of independence.
Janie’s development along the way can be charted by studying her
use of language and her relationship to her own voice.

At the end of her journey, Janie returns to Eatonville
a strong and proud woman, but at the beginning of her story, she
is unsure of who she is or how she wants to live. When she tells
her story to Pheoby, she begins with her revelation under the blossoming
pear tree—the revelation that initiates her quest. Under the pear
tree, she witnesses a perfect union of harmony within nature. She
knows that she wants to achieve this type of love, a reciprocity
that produces oneness with the world, but is unsure how to proceed.
At this point, she is unable to articulate even to herself exactly
what she wants.

When Jody Starks enters her life, he seems to offer the
ideal alternative to the dull and pragmatic Logan Killicks. With
his ambitious talk, Jody convinces Janie that he will use his thirst
for conquest to help her realize her dreams, whatever they may be.
Janie learns that Jody’s exertion of power only stifles her. But
just before Jody’s death, Janie’s repressed power breaks through
in a torrent of verbal retaliation. Her somewhat cruel tirade at
the dying Jody measures the depth of Jody’s suppression of her inner
life. Having begun to find her voice, Janie blows through social
niceties to express herself.

Janie flourishes in her relationship with Tea Cake, as
he “teaches her the maiden language all over.” Her control of speech
reaches a new level as she learns to be silent when she chooses.
This idea of silence as strength rather than passivity comes to
the forefront during Janie’s trial, when the narrator glosses over
her testimony. Dialogue has been pivotally important up to this
point, and one might expect Hurston to use the courtroom scene to
showcase Janie’s hard-won, mature voice. The absence of dialogue
here, Mary Ellen Washington argues in the foreword present in most
editions of the novel, reflects Hurston’s discomfort with rhetoric
for its own sake; Hurston doesn’t want Janie’s voice to be confused
with that of the lawyer or politician. Janie’s development of her
voice is inseparable from her inner growth, and the drama of the
courtroom may be too contrived to draw out the nuances of her inner
life. Janie summarizes the novel’s attitude toward language when
she tells Pheoby that talking “don’t amount tuh uh hill uh beans”
if it isn’t connected to actual experience.

Tea Cake

Tea Cake functions as the catalyst that helps
drive Janie toward her goals. Like all of the other men in Janie’s
life, he plays only a supporting role. Before his arrival, Janie
has already begun to find her own voice, as is demonstrated when
she finally stands up to Jody. As we see at the end of the novel,
after Tea Cake’s death, Janie remains strong and hopeful; therefore,
it’s fair to say that Janie is not dependent on Tea Cake. Nevertheless,
he does play a crucial role in her development.

When she meets Tea Cake, Janie has already begun
to develop a strong, proud sense of self, but Tea Cake accelerates
this spiritual growth. Ever since her moment under the pear tree,
Janie has known that she will find what she is searching for only
through love. In Tea Cake she finds a creative and vivacious personality
who enjoys probing the world around him and respects Janie’s need
to develop. Whereas Logan treats her like a farm animal and Jody
silences her, Tea Cake converses and plays with her. Instead of
stifling her personality, he encourages it, introducing her to new
experiences and skills.

While Tea Cake is vital to Janie’s development, he is
not an indispensable part of her life, a crucial truth that is revealed
when Janie shoots him. He plays a role in her life, helping her
to better understand herself. By teaching her how to shoot a gun,
ironically, he provides her with the tools that ultimately kill
him. Janie’s decision to save herself rather than yield her life
up to the crazy Tea Cake points to her increasing sense of self
and demonstrates that Tea Cake’s ultimate function in the novel
is not to make Janie dependent on him for happiness but to help
her find happiness and security within herself.

Jody Starks

Jody’s character is opposite that of Tea Cake.
He is cruel, conceited, and uninterested in Janie as a person. But
his cruelty is not a result of any specific animosity toward Janie;
rather, it is a reflection of the values that he holds and the way
that he understands his relationship to the world. Jody depends
on the exertion of power for his sense of himself; he is only happy
and secure when he feels that he holds power over those around him.
In Janie’s words, he needs to “have [his] way all [his] life, trample and
mash down and then die ruther than tuh let [him]self heah ’bout
it.” He needs to feel like a “big voice,” a force of “irresistible
maleness” before whom the whole world bows.

In order to maintain this illusion of irresistible power,
Jody tries to dominate everyone and everything around him. His entire
existence is based on purchasing, building, bullying, and political
planning. He marries Janie not because he loves her as a person
but because he views her as an object that will serve a useful purpose
in his schemes. She is young, beautiful, and stately, and thus fits
his ideal of what a mayor’s wife should be. Jody is obsessed with notions
of power, and Janie remains unfulfilled by their relationship because
these notions require her to be a mute, static object and prevent
her from growing. He forces her to tie her hair up because its phallic
quality threatens his male dominance and because its feminine beauty
makes him worry that he will lose her. Janie ultimately rebels against
Jody’s suppression of her, and by toppling his secure sense of his
own power, she destroys his will to live.

reading this book will send you into a deep depression because after you finish you will realize you spent hours translating this book into real english in your head and then you gained absolutely nothing from it.

abcdefg gummy bears are chasing me one is red one is blue one is trying to steal my shoe now im running 4 my life cuz the red one has a knife im running at full speed ahead but then i stop cuz i havent been fed i feel my energy bar depleting but then a turkey begins retreating he whines about his finga and then i prone walk since i havent unlocked ninja i barrel roll into the red teddy take his knife and get ready i stab his fluffeh gooey back and then prepare for the secret attack i drop it to the groung and get a predator missile to move a... Read more→